When it comes to family trips, I’m king at packing the car, I could fit my whole house (granted it’s a small cape cod) into our VW Jetta. I take up every nook and cranny of the car, I don’t crush things, I just slide them in comfortably. I’m willing to challenge anyone to a car packing contest.
Tonight the staff leaves for Avalon, NJ for our annual planning retreat, and the problem that needs solving at this time is how do we fit all the food and stuff in the cars? It’s really not a major problem, one that’s being figured out as I write this; however, it makes me think about all the times we try to fit too much into our schedules, workloads, etc. So how do we resolve this issue? You might want to:
- Eliminate the Unnecessary – Look at where the labor is outweighing the fruit, and get rid of it. But before you do you might want to figure out what the intentional and unintentional consequences might be. Before we can make more time for ourselves we need to see where we are wasting energy.
- Schedule Margin and Grace – Where you can you sacrifice perfection and allow failure so that people and programs can grow? Where do you need to allow looser guidelines, so that you have room to recover in case of mishaps? When you have margin and grace, you have a culture of flexibility and growth.
- Revisit and Review – Keep coming back to the subject, this isn’t a one time deal. Schedule when you are going to look at your schedule, your programs. Evaluate, get feedback and reflect on where you need to improve.
Where do you feel the most overload, work, home, personal?